HP Pavilion, RH9.0 install: firewire hangs

[Casey Delaney Callendrello]

Hello all:
	This is formerly ccallendrello at exeter.edu, since required to get a new
address after graduation.  Anyways...

As a graduation gift, I was given an HP Pavilion ze5385 notebook.  All I
can say is that it is a super-slick notebook.  Glowing blue lights
everywhere, high-quality screen, the works.  Natrually, the first thing
I went to do is see if I could install linux.  After rolling in the 
glory of Partition Magic 8.0, I was ready to go.
When the RH 9.0 CD booted, it went to the module-loading screen.  There, 
it froze loading the ohci1394 module--the firewire one.  The easiest 
thing I can think of is to find a way to disable this, however there is 
no way to disable firewire in the very limited bios.  Is there a kernel 
argument I can pass it to make it not load the firewire module?  Do any 
of you have experience in getting fireire to work?  I imagine once I get 
the base system installed, I can tweak the firewire module to get it to 
work, but since both redhat and suse insist on loading the firewire 
module at install boot, there's nothing I can do.

In short: Is there a kernel argument I an pass to prevent RH 9.0 from 
loading the ohci1394 module?

	Many Thanks, Casey Callendrello